Thursday, October 13, 2011

Eloise

Eloise's 15th month of life is in full swing. There is so much to say about her. Brian and I talk about her in the evenings even though we spent the whole day with her. She is a delight. Here are some highlights:

· Clothes pins continue to be a consistent favorite toy. She empties the whole bag and then sits surrounded by pegs which she then "sorts" into piles and readjusts and pokes into her shoes or other holes in the boat. When Leanne, a visiting YWAMer was aboard they sat for a very long time while Leanne had Eloise practice identifying the colors of the different pegs. Blue was the most successful color Eloise learned.

· Another way Eloise passes the time aboard is to sort clothes. She asks for shirts from her clothes bins. I pull out about five to ten shirts and put them in a pile for her. From there Eloise will collect the whole pile into her arms and take it to a different location, sit down and begin sifting through. She makes piles, inspects the various decorations or embellishments on the clothes, or piles them on her head. This morning, Eloise stacked three shirts on her head, stood up and started twirling around. A stack of clothes can occupy her for up to an hour.

· Eloise's sign language vocabulary is continuing to grow. She uses over 30 signs. "kitty", "poop" and "bread" are recent acquisitions. She now makes the poop sign often when she wants to be changed. She also says, "shh shh shh" when she is peeing in her diaper. Her interest and ability to communicate about this topic lead to a major milestone…..her first poop and pee in her own potty. The day before the big day she had given me the poop sign but I didn't believe her because I checked her diaper and it was clean. A minute later, it wasn't clean! I hadn't expected her to anticipate and know ahead of time. Well, on the big day, I heeded her when she told me she had to pee. I congratulated her and had the joy of seeing her be immensely proud of herself. She clapped her hands and squealed happily. Daddy showed up and she showed him and signed and squealed about her accomplishment. Only a few minutes later, I saw her "poop face" and said, "Eloise you're pooping." She got excited and I whisked her into the bathroom and we had success! More happy squeals and pointing and signing and clapping.
· OK, no more potty talk. Here's a sweet story. Yesterday Eloise and I were in a waiting room. She found some brochures and was sorting them and stacking them. As more people arrived, she started pretending to give them brochures, walking over offering them and then taking them back before the people could keep them. This is usually how Eloise "gives" things. However, a couple walked in with a tiny three year old girl that seemed to have some sort of physical disability or be in pain, a quiet unhappy girl. Eloise was her usual excited self when she saw the other "baby". She walked over and waved and smiled and tried to interact but the girl cringed away. Eloise came back to where I was sitting. I whispered to her that maybe the little girl wanted to have Eloise's flowers and she could give them to her. Eloise trotted straight over to where she was storing her plumeria blossoms and went straight over with outstretched hand to give them. But this was a real gift. She waited patiently while the girl grumbled about having her space invaded. The father of the girl received the flowers and smiled at Eloise. Elosie looked around and found a third plumeria blossom and went back to the girl and held it out again, patiently. I was very proud of her sweetness and humbled by her giving away something she really liked. It made me want to be more like Eloise, willing to give and be kind even if my offerings aren't met with thanks and appreciation.

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Goodbye Ono

Nomad and crew made the 24 hour trip back to Lautoka and arrived yesterday. The almost two months of village life was a true gift to me. When I first arrived in Ono I was put off by a lot of features of the community. There are many rules and layers of rules that direct the structure of the community, its visitors and the roles of the people that live there. For example, a village is made up of a few different clans. Each clan has a different identity such as the chiefly clan, the spokesmen clan, the landowner clan, the fishing clan, etc. Children are taught as they grown up who they are, who the other people are. I don't completely understand it all but it's an example of how village life gives people identity. People know when someone walks past who their father, grandfather, and other ancestors were. They know the stories of that person's heritage. It doesn't stop there. In a village less than half a mile long and a quarter mile deep, houses sometimes 10 feet away from each other, Family strife can't be hidden, privacy is hard to come by. While I can see drawbacks to living like this, the sense of being known and integrated into the lives of other people is very real. When we walked through the village, we were known by every single person. Even if we didn't see someone watching us, or had never met them, they knew our purpose and that we belonged on the yacht parked out front of their beach, and they all knew Eloise's name. We were accepted to walk on their paths, eat their limes, papayas, pick up their seashells and do our laundry at their spigots. By accepting us, they accepted responsibility for Eloise, in the same way that every villager demonstrated responsibility for every child in the village. Eloise, and all the other children in the village, had a village full of aunties and uncles and older brothers and sisters. Again, there were some drawbacks to this (Eloise had her cheeks pinched about 50 times per day). But the feeling of being accepted, the gift of having other people responsible to watch my child, the sound of "come in for a cup of tea?" from a door as we walked passed, those are all good things. I will miss the village community and our friends there.

We have two more weeks here in Fiji. We will spend that time taking Eloise to the beach, provisioning the boat for Brian's passage to Hawaii, doing maintenance and preparatory projects for the passage, and hopefully Brian will get in a little bit of surfing as we are near to Cloudbreak, a well known surf break.

After that, we fly to New Zealand to see Eloise's Nana and Papa, John and Annette Carr. As our original plan had been to return Nomad to New Zealand this year, we have some unfinished business such as selling the car we bought and cleaning out the items that migrated from Nomad into their storage room. But Eloise has a few new skills she wants to show off as well. After the short visit in New Zealand, Brian will return to Fiji, meet up with Jeff Ault arriving from California and set off on their trip when the weather is right. Eloise and I will fly to San Francisco and start trying to adjust to life in a house again.

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Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Papaya

Papaya,

It's Papaya season here on Ono Island. These papayas taste a lot more delicious than the things they call papayas in the California grocery stores. However, when it looked like we had 5 large specimens coming ripe all at once, I knew we wouldn't eat them all unless I took drastic measures. Out came the Edmond's cookbook. Two papayas made a delicious chutney (I modified the peach chutney recipe) to eat with the wahoo caught last Friday, and two more made a fairly passable jam. Suddenly however, we have three more fruits to do away with. Hmmm. Papaya bread?

It is our last week in front of Vabea village. Bubu Tara (Grandma Tara) and her daughter Vuta are teaching me to weave a mat. It takes time! Good thing it's a small one. Richard and Thelma are teaching and I'm trying to sit in on some of their classes. Brian is daily working on small projects that are preventative maintenance as he thinks ahead to the bash up to Hawaii. (Note: in my mind, a small boat project is one that takes less than a week from start to finish and doesn't require a large portion of the boat to be taken apart). Eloise is continuing to enthrall the village children. Today, Brian and Eloise were in the village playing. He heard the kids letting out from school and whisked Eloise into a house so she wouldn't get inundated by kisses and yankings.

This weekend we'll make the day trip up to the main island of Viti Levu. We'll anchor in Musket Cove (a cruiser mecca) and continue on projects, family time etc. while also putting Brian in the proximity of some surf.

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